While you can "self-test" yourself or your child for gender dysphoria, this should only be considered the first step toward a diagnosis.
marked incongruence between your experienced and expressed gender and your primary or secondary sex characteristics. strong desire to be rid of your primary or secondary sex characteristics. strong desire for the primary or secondary sex characteristics of the other gender. strong desire to be of the other gender.
A diagnosis for gender dysphoria is included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a manual published by the American Psychiatric Association. The diagnosis was created to help people with gender dysphoria get access to necessary health care and effective treatment.
Exercise – a healthy amount of exercise can improve your mood. Do what you like - dance your heart out in your bedroom, do some yoga, ride a bike, go to circus classes, use the local park gym equipment, or look up exercises that will shape your body in ways that could reduce your dysphoria.
What does dysphoria feel like? Gender dysphoria can feel different for everyone. It can manifest as distress, depression, anxiety, restlessness or unhappiness. It might feel like anger or sadness, or feeling slighted or negative about your body, or like there are parts of you missing.
No one knows exactly what causes gender dysphoria. Some experts believe that hormones in the womb, genes, and cultural and environmental factors may be involved.
Gender dysphoria history: Of the 55 TM patients included in our study, 41 (75%) reported feeling GD for the first time by age 7, and 53 (96%) reported first experiencing GD by age 13 (Table 2). A total of 80% of patients reported that feelings of GD were among their earliest childhood memories.
Your particular needs may be best addressed by transgender health services offered by NHS gender dysphoria clinics (GDCs). All NHS GDCs are commissioned by NHS England, who set the service specifications for how they work. A GP or another health professional can refer you directly to one of the 8 GDCs.
People with gender dysphoria decide which treatment options are right for them. Some are satisfied with taking hormones alone. Some are satisfied with no medical or surgical treatment but prefer to dress as the felt gender in public.
To put in simpler terms, a person with gender dysphoria is not mentally ill; they are dissatisfied with the gender assigned at their birth. A person with body dysmorphia has a disorder in which they perceive their body or face as “ugly,” “fat,” or otherwise unattractive despite medical or personal reassurances.
the foetus' insensitivity to the hormones, known as androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS)(external link opens in a new window / tab) – when this happens, gender dysphoria may be caused by hormones not working properly in the womb.
Is gender dysphoria a mental disorder? Because gender dysphoria is included in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also called the DSM, it is diagnosed as a mental disorder, experts said.
If you are experiencing gender dysphoria, you may feel more comfortable wearing clothes initially designed for other genders. However, gender dysphoria does not explicitly relate to sexual arousal from wearing these clothes, unlike transvestic disorder.
Gender dysphoria manifests early in childhood and can persist for years before patients undergo counseling and treatment, a Cedars-Sinai study has found.
A teen suffering from gender dysphoria may exhibit a range of feelings and behaviors that are confusing to parents. These patterns typically develop in early childhood. They can also start to emerge as the adolescent grows into a young adult.
A recent study investigated the volume of grey matter in individuals with GD and found that they had a smaller volume in the left posterior superior hemisphere of the cerebellum compared to male controls and a smaller volume of the right inferior orbitofrontal cortex compared to female controls.
Psychiatric and biological causes
Studies suggest that gender dysphoria may have biological causes associated with the development of gender identity before birth. More research is needed before the causes of gender dysphoria can be fully understood.
– have you felt satisfied being a girl? – have you felt pressured by others to be a girl, although you don't really feel like one? – have you felt uncertain about your gender, that is, feeling somewhere in between a girl and a boy? – have you had the wish or desire to be a boy?
Because those with untreated gender dysphoria are at risk of a variety of negative outcomes, including mood symptomatology, suicidality, substance use disorders, and other psychosocial risk factors, it is critical that health care providers are adept in the provision of holistic, patient-centered care.
Gender dysphoria refers to the suffering due to an incongruence between one's sex assigned at birth and one's self-perceived gender. Primary care physicians often play an important role in diagnosis and initiation of treatment of gender dysphoria.
Gender dysphoria and trans-identifying people
In the UK, there are about 650,000 trans people, equating to about 1 in 100.
If a trans employee has been diagnosed with a condition such as gender dysphoria, then they may also be protected by the disability discrimination provisions of the Act, as long as the other criteria for a disability have been met. Please see our specific page on disability discrimination for more information.
Your health care provider might make a diagnosis of gender dysphoria based on: Behavioral health evaluation. Your provider will evaluate you to confirm the presence of gender dysphoria and document how prejudice and discrimination due to your gender identity (minority stress factors) impact your mental health.
They see themselves, or a certain aspect of themselves, as “distorted” or “ugly.” Though gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia are two different things, it's very possible to experience both disorders, sometimes at the same time. For example, someone who has gender dysphoria may also become preoccupied with breast size.
The estimated prevalence of gender dysphoria among those assigned female sex at birth rose sharply at the age of 11, peaked between the ages of 17 and 19, and then fell below that of those assigned male sex at birth, by the age of 22.